By Peter Hecht
The Sacramento Bee Staff Writer
Like
students anywhere else, classmates at Folsom High are well familiar with school
assemblies and the hurry-up-and-waits they endure lining up for everything from
pep rallies to hot lunches. But Friday, summoned out of classrooms by the hundreds,
they lined up feeling unusual anxiousness and grief.
Nearly
2,400 students and scores of faculty and staff members queued up before school
nurses and public health workers to receive doses of antibiotics. The pills were
given out in hope of eradicating a bacteria that can cause meningococcal disease.
The students gathered, knowing that two of their classmates had died from the
disease.
"Just
to stand in line to take a pill is incredible," said Brett DeWitt, 17, the student
body president. "It's not a normal thing. I told my friends: You will remember
this the rest of your lives."
Tanya
Edsall, 17, died Wednesday of the bacterial blood infection related to meningitis.
Classmate Robert Karle, 18, died from a similar condition last month.
In
an extraordinary effort, Sacramento County health officials decided to summon
the students to the school multipurpose room and administer -- with parents' permission
-- doses of ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic that can eliminate the meningoccus bacteria
from the nose and throat of people who may carry it.
Nationally,
3,000 cases of meningococcal disease occur each year in the United States and
about 10 percent of cases are fatal. The bacteria is most often spread through
an exchange of saliva caused from such casual things as people sharing sodas,
lipstick or cigarettes. As much as 20 percent of the population carries the bacteria.
But most will never suffer the illness, which first appears with common flu-like
symptoms.
Public
health officials normally only recommend dispensing antibiotics to close friends
or family members of meningitis sufferers. They fear giving out too many antibiotics
could eventually lead to more resistant, and dangerous, strains of bacteria.
But
two deaths at one school, and a resulting wave of fear spreading throughout the
community, convinced them it was time to act in a substantial way.
"I
hope we never have to repeat this," said county Health Officer Glennah Trochet.
"We are expecting to stop it. The whole point is that we believe this bacteria
must be in this community, among these kids. The point is to eliminate this in
this high school. To do that, we must do this (administer antibiotics) all at
once."
The
recent deaths and Friday's dispensing of the antibiotic was unsettling to students
such as Quinn McCutchan, a 17-year-old junior. She'd had some minor cold and flu
symptoms recently that she normally wouldn't have given a second thought. She
called her family doctor and asked her if she should take the antibiotic. "She
assured me ... that this was the best thing to do," she said.
McCutchan
knew the two students who died, though not well.
"Tanya
was in my French class and I knew her from volleyball and I knew her little sister
too," she said. "I knew Robert from several years ago .... It really makes you
question. Is this supposed to happen to kids in our life? Death is a natural.
But it seems completely unnatural for a place like this."
Besides
the anxiety that has permeated the campus, Blaine White, a Folsom High School
counselor, has had to help deal with the grief. This week, he met with friends
rocked by the death of Edsall, a young woman who excelled in art classes and worked
as an assistant in the school office.
"Some
students in grief seem to say it seems like everyone's dying," said White, who
added that kids in particular who have lost family members in recent years have
taken the events quite hard. "Quite a few have suffered some other loss. This
triggers that recent grief. And it's scary to them."
School
registrar Pam Hardenbrook, mother of two students, Lisa, 18, and Kelly, 16, said
her daughters and most students "are not panicked," yet "are concerned for their
friends." But their parents may be another story.
"I
think it's harder on some of the parents than the kids," she said. "They're just
really reacting strongly."
Principal
Jill Solberg said "close to 100 percent" of students on campus were taking the
antibiotic. A few declined for religious reason or if they had taken the same
antibiotic in recent days.
Some
of the kids did their best to make light of it all.
I'm
gonna freak," one girl exclaimed to her friends when a nurse told her she couldn't
have a Coke at lunchtime because caffeine wasn't allowed with the antibiotic.
And two boys anxiously slapped palms after taking the pill. "I don't like this,
dude," one said.
"It's
weird taking this pill because two people have died," said Peter Kroff, an 18-year-old
senior. "They didn't have this chance." | 
